Electronic commerce (“e-commerce”) is relevant to many segments of the economy. For many years, companies have used Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) technology to communicate data, such as purchase orders, invoices, and electronic payments, via a communication network with other companies. Because EDI relies on contractually established procedures and interfaces, EDI primarily addresses a predetermined set of company-to-company transactions. Furthermore, setup and maintenance of EDI systems can be an expensive prospect, often precluding its use by smaller companies.
In the past, the communications connections between companies have included dial-up access and direct connections between the companies' networks. Furthermore, the technical sophistication that is required to support an EDI system is significant. With the advent of the Internet, more companies have easy access to the Web sites and extranets of other companies, promising to lower the costs of EDI for the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, cost and technical requirements remain significant obstacles preventing some companies from employing EDI.
Another more recently developing segment of e-commerce involves retailers and customers. In the retailing segment of e-commerce, a customer can go online to access a retailer's e-commerce web site to conduct business, such as researching and purchasing products and services, managing their financial assets, and obtaining technical support. The web site provides an interface to data, such as customer data, product data, and transaction data, and applications, such as a purchase application or a credit card processing application. It is said that most retailers must now have an Internet presence to be competitive players in their markets. However, the costs and technical complexity of developing and maintaining an e-commerce web site also prevent some retailers from doing business on the Web.
A third segment of e-commerce relates to wholesale transactions between vendors and retailers. For example, a grocery store may order a shipment of cheese from a cheese vendor, such as KRAFT or a small specialty cheese supplier/distributor. For some vendors, particularly smaller vendors, the grocer places such orders through a wholesale broker, who represents multiple vendors. Typically, such orders are placed via telephone calls or faxes between the grocer and the broker, who calls or faxes the vendor to place the order. While a large vendor may have the resources to maintain an e-commerce web site for such orders, smaller vendors and brokers tend to be left out of the e-commerce world because of cost and technical complexity issues.
Typically, an e-commerce website is hosted on a web server computer. Some companies internally maintain the web server and develop the software executing on the web server. Alternatively, many companies exist to provide such Web hosting services to a wide variety of businesses. Likewise, the development of web pages and application executed on the web server can also be contracted out to web development companies. However, to smaller companies, the costs and/or technical sophistication required to establish and maintain a web presence, even with the assistance of these Web hosting and development companies, may prevent their participation in the e-commerce revolution. Often, the economies of scale that would initially allow such a larger company to invest the resources into developing and maintaining an e-commerce solution are not available to a smaller company. Even approaches that allow a company to access and maintain its e-commerce web site (on another company's web hosting server) through a browser interface present financial obstacles (e.g., significant storage, connection, and bandwidth charges) and technical obstacles (e.g., the time and substantial technical understanding to make customizations through an interface that is not the same as the company's standard business application's interface). Accordingly, another approach for providing an easy, low-cost e-commerce solution is desirable.